Greek ,
Venice. The most important Greek recensions of the
Alexander Romance are the α, β, γ and ε recensions. There is also a variant of β called λ, and the now-lost δ was perhaps the most important in the transmission of the text into the non-Greek world as it was the basis of the 10th-century Latin translation produced by
Leo the Archpriest.
Beta (β) recension The β recension was composed between 300 and 550 AD. It rephrases much material in α and also adds new material to it. Compared to α, it lacks the end of Book I and the first six chapters of Book II. However, it contains the end of Book II, which is missing from α.
Epsilon (ε) recension The ε recension is a Byzantine reworking of the
Alexander Romance, known in full only from the Bodleian manuscript Barocci 17. It was probably composed in the early 8th century to 9th centuries AD; its interpolation of the
Gog and Magog episode from the
Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius gives a
terminus post quem after 691/692. It rewrites the α recension while borrowing from β, abandons the earlier three-book structure, and is the most innovative and intertextual of the Greek recensions: it adds Alexander’s journey to Jerusalem and conversion to the God of the Jews, battles with monstrous peoples and wild women, relocates the Candace episode from
Ethiopia to
Amastris on the
Black Sea. Other episodes revised by the text include the poisoning of Alexander, and his subsequent death and succession with an older testament being replaced by a division of his conquered territory among the
Diadochi. Its stronger emphasis on wonders, prophecy, and Christianizing biography made it important for later Byzantine, vernacular Greek, Slavic, Arabic, and Hebrew Alexander traditions.
Gamma (γ) recension The γ recension is a later and much larger Byzantine compilation, preserved in three manuscripts. Since it depends on ε, it cannot be earlier than the 8th or 9th century AD, while the upper limit of its date is set by its oldest manuscripts, dating to the 14th century. The language in the text is old, indicating that it falls within an earlier period of its possible dating range. It combines the β and ε recensions, mostly following β while inserting large amounts of ε material. It adds a long passage from
Palladius of Helenopolis, a 4th-5th century chronicler, in the
Gymnosophists episode and the work ends by cataloguing the peoples that were subdued by Alexander. The redactor seems to have aimed at an exhaustive synthesis, but intervened selectively to magnify Alexander: he suppresses episodes that diminish the hero, such as the sack of Thebes in β and the suggestion of suicide in ε, while exaggerating themes with moral and eschatological dimensions (like the
memento mori treatment of Alexander’s death). • The
Zacher Epitome, a 9th-century abridged and much more popular version of the
Res gestae by Julius. • The
Nativitas et victoria Alexandri Magni regis (
The Birth and Victories of King Alexander the Great) is a lost tenth-century translation of the
Alexander Romance by
Leo of Naples, translated from a Greek copy he discovered in
Constantinople while he was on a diplomatic mission commissioned by
John III of Naples. • The
Alexandreis, a medieval
Latin epic poem by
Walter of Châtillon, a 12th-century
French writer and
theologian. •
Alexandre by
Albéric de Pisançon, composed 1110–1125. • ''
Roman d'Alexandre, also known as the Li romans d'Alixandre'' ( 1160), attributed to clergyman
Alexandre de Bernay. •
Decasyllabic Alexander, by an anonymous author between 1160 and 1170. •
Le Roman de Fuerre de Gadres by a certain
Eustache, later used by Alexandre de Bernay and Thomas de Kent, composed c. 1170. •
Alixandre en Orient by
Lambert de Tort, composed 1170. •
Mort Alixandre, an anonymous fragment of which 159 lines survive, composed c. 1170. • The
Roman de toute chevalerie, an Anglo-Norman work of
Thomas de Kent. This became the basis for the
Middle English King Alysaunder. Composed c. 1175–1180. •
La Venjance Alixandre by
Jehan le Nevelon, composed c. 1180. • The ''Roman d'Alexandre'' of Alexandre de Paris, composed c. 1185 (not to be confused by the work of the same name by Alexandre de Barnay). •
Le Vengement Alixandre by
Gui de Cambrai, composed c. 1191. • The
Histoire ancienne jusquʾà César, composed c. 1213–14. • ''
Roman d'Alexandre en prose'', by an anonymous author, the most popular Old French version, composed sometime in the 13th century. •
Prise de Defur, from
Picardy 1250. • ''
Voyage d'Alexandre au Paradis terrestre, a French adaptation ( 1260) of the Latin Iter ad paradisum''. •
Les Vœux du paon of
Jacques de Longuyon, the first of three works in the
Paon Cycle. •
Le Restor du Paon of
Jean le Court, composed before 1338 and a continuation of the
Les Voeux de paon. •
Le Parfait du paon by
Jean de Le Mote, the final poem of the
Paon Cycle. Composed c. 1340. • The
Histoire du bon roy Alixandre by
Jean Wauquelin, composed before 1448. •
Fais et concquestes du noble roy Alexandre, a late medieval prose version. Composed c. 1450–1470. •
Faits du grand Alexandre by
Vasque de Lucène, a prose translation (1468) of
Quintus Curtius Rufus's
Historiae Alexandri Magni. Composed c. 1468.
Italian Italian versions of the
Alexander Romance include: • The
Historia Alexandri Regis of
Quilichino, composed in 1236 in
Recanati. It was fairly popular, as indicated by the survival of twenty manuscripts of the work. • The
Alessandreide in rima of
Jacopo di Carlo. • The
Istoria Alexander Regis of
Domenico Scolari. • The
I Nobili fatti di Alessandro Magno, from the 14th century, edited by Grion.
Romanian The Romanian
Alexander Romance, entitled the
Alexandria, was derived from a Greek and Serbian variant and became the most widely-read literary text in
Romania between the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. In 1833, the Romanian legend was translated into Bulgarian in a copy of an earlier work,
Paisiy Hilendarski's
Slavic-Bulgarian History (1762).
Spanish The two most important Spanish versions of the
Alexander Romance are: • The
Libro de Alexandre. This was a famous anonymous poem of the
Alexander Romance from Christian Spain. • The
Historia novelada de Alejandro Magno. This is an obscure Spanish version, only having been discovered an edition of Part 4 of
Alfonso X's
General Estoria in a recently printed edition.
Germanic languages English and Scots In medieval
England, the
Alexander Romance experienced remarkable popularity. It is even referred to in
Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, where the monk apologizes to the pilgrimage group for treating a material so well known. There are five major romances in
Middle English that survive, though most only in fragments. There are also two versions from
Scotland, one sometimes ascribed to the
Early Scots poet
John Barbour, which exists only in a sixteenth-century printing; and a
Middle Scots version from 1499: •
King Alisaunder from 1275. • The
Romance of Alisaunder (or
Alexander of Macedon), sometimes referred to as
Alexander A, is a fragment of 1247 lines written in
alliterative verse. It was probably written between 1340 and 1370, soon before the beginning of the
Alliterative Revival, of which it is believed to be one of the oldest remaining poems. It has been preserved in a school notebook dating from 1600. Alexander A deals with the begetting of Alexander by
Nectanebo II (Nectanebus), his birth, and his early years, and ends with the midst of the account of Philip's siege of
Byzantium. It is likely that the source for this fragment has been the I2-recension of the
Historia de Preliis. Beside that it has been expanded with additional material taken from
Paulus Orosius's
Historiae adversum paganos, the adverse remarks, which are typical of Orosius, however have been omitted by the poet, whose main concern is Alexander's heroic conduct. •
Alexander and Dindimus, sometimes referred to as
Alexander B, is also written in alliterative verse. This fragment is found in the and consists of five letters which are passed between Alexander and Dindimus, who is the king of the
Brahmins, a people of philosophers who shun all worldly lusts, ambitions and entertainments. In this respect their way of life resembles the ideal of an aescetic life, which was also preached by medieval monastic orders, such as the Franciscans. The source of Alexander B again is the I2-recension of the
Historia de Preliis. • The
Wars of Alexander, sometimes referred to as
Alexander C, is the longest of the alliterative versions of the Middle English Alexander Romances. It goes back to the I3-recension of the
Historia de Preliis and can be found in the MS Ashmole 44 and in the Dublin Trinity College MS 213. Although both manuscripts are incomplete they supplement each other fairly well. In this version much space is given to letters and prophecies, which often bear a moralizing and philosophical tenor. The letters are an integral part of the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition. The dominant theme is pride, which inevitably results in the downfall of kings. In
The Wars of Alexander the hero is endowed with superhuman qualities, which shows in the romance insofar as his enemies fall to him by the dozens and he is always at the center of action. • The
Prose Life of Alexander copied by
Robert Thornton, 1440. Middle Scots versions include: •
The Buik of Alexander, anonymous, attributed to
John Barbour, dates to 1438 according to its first printed edition from 1580.
German • The German
Song of Alexander by
Lamprecht, composed around 1150 as an adaptation of a poem by
Albéric of Pisançon some fifty years earlier. It does not directly survive but in a version of it, close to the original, produced by Vorau. •
Alexander of Strasbourg.'' • The
Bréf Alexandri Magni (
Bréf), an Old Norse adaptation of the
Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem. In the 13th century, a translation from an Alexander legend either in Latin or Italian was made to produce the first
Alexander Romance in the Cyrillic script. A redaction of this text in the 14th century in
Dalmatia is what has come down as the
Old Serbian Alexander Romance. and it went on to become the basis for adaptations of Alexander legends throughout the
Balkans. By the 17th century, it was circulating in both Bulgarian and Romanian translations. • Serbian translation, so called
Serbian Alexandria, was written in
Serbia and completed in the 14th-century. It is known from eleven Serbian manuscripts, the first extant one dating to the 15th-century, and follows the Greek λ recension of the
Romance.
Irish The
Irish Alexander Romance, also known as the
Imthusa Alexandair, was composed around 1100, representing the first complete vernacular version of the Romance in a European vernacular. It includes episodes such as Alexander's visit to Jerusalem, talking trees, encounters with Dindimus, and more. Two sources the author identified for his work were
Orosius and
Josephus.
Semitic languages Arabic • The story of
Dhu al-Qarnayn ("The Two-Horned One") in the
Quran is generally seen in tradition and among contemporary historians to represent an allusive synopsis of the Romance tradition in the way it was expressed by the
Syriac Alexander Legend. The names Alexander and Dhu al-Qarnayn were widely merged in subsequent Muslim literature when describing the legends and accomplishments of the former. • The
Qissat al-Iskandar (fully the
Qiṣṣat al-Iskandar wa-mā fīhā min al-amr al-ʿadjīb, or "The story of Alexander and the wonderful things it contains") is a late eighth or early ninth-century recension of the
Syriac Alexander Legend composed by ‘Umara ibn Zayd (767-815). • The
Qissat Dhulqarnayn (
Qissat Dhulqarnayn, "Story of Dhulqarnayn") is a
Hispano-Arabic legend of
Alexander the Great preserved in two fourteenth-century manuscripts in
Madrid and likely dates as a ninth-century Arabic translation of the
Syriac Alexander Legend produced in
Al-Andalus. • A second
Qissat Dhulqarnayn containing a synopsis of the
Alexander Romance is known from the eleventh-century ''Ara'is al-majalis fi Qisas al-anbiya'
(Book of Prophets'') of
al-Tha'labi (d. 1036). • A third
Qissat Dhulqarnayn known from one 18th-century manuscript from Timbuktu, whose manuscript was recently edited and published in an Arabic edition and French translation by Bohas and Sinno. • The
Hadith Dhulqarnayn, like the
Qissat Dhulqarnayn, is another Hispano-Arabic version of the Alexander legend. It dates to the 15th century. •
The Sīrat al-Iskandar is a 15th century
Arabic popular
romance about
Alexander the Great. It belongs to the
sīra shaʿbiyya genre. • The
Tārīkh al-Iskandar al-Makdūni (
History of Alexander of Macedon), translated into Arabic by the Melkite bishop Yuwāsif ibn Suwaydān (c. 1669) from the Byzantine ζ-recension of Pseudo-Callisthenes. • The
Sirat al-malek Eskandar Dhu’ l-Qarneyn, known from one 17th century manuscript copied by Yusof Ebn-Atiye (or Qozmân). • The
Kitāb Qiṣṣat Dhīʾl-Qarnayn from Mali.
Ethiopic An
Ethiopic version of the
Alexander Romance was first composed in the
Geʽez language between the 14th and 16th centuries was produced as a translation of an intermediary 9th-century Arabic text of what ultimately goes back to the Syriac recension. There are seven known Ethiopian Alexander Romances: • The
Ethiopic Alexander Romance, also known as
Zēnā Eskender or the
Ethiopic Pseudo-Callisthenes • The
History of Alexander by Abû Shâker • The
History of Alexander by al-Makin • The
History of Alexander by Joseph ben Gorion • The
History of the Death of Alexander by an anonymous writer • The
Christian Romance of the Life of Alexander • The
History of the Blessed Men who lived in the Days of Jeremiah the Prophet and the Account of the Vision of Abbâ Gerâsimus Hebrew There are three or four
medieval Hebrew versions of the
Alexander Romance: • The
Josippon, a 10th-century text into which a version of the
Alexander Romance was interpolated into in later times. • A literal and slightly abridged translation from the original Greek is found in the manuscript Parma,
Bibliotheca I. B. de Rossi, MS Heb. 1087. This version was also partially interpolated into the
Sefer Yosippon in the 10th century. • In the 12th or 13th century, an anonymous translator or translators translated a
lost Arabic translation of the Latin
Historia de Preliis into Hebrew. This is found in the manuscript Paris,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Héb. 671.5 and London,
Jews' College Library, MS 145. These may represent a single translation in different versions or else two translations, with the Paris version having been used to complete the London. The translator (or one of them) may have been
Samuel ibn Tibbon, who made other translations from Arabic. All four were translated in the same 1889 volume by
E. A. Wallis Budge, though some of them have appeared in newer editions since then. • The
Syriac Alexander Romance (
Tašʿītā d̄ʾAleksandrōs), A Syriac translation of the
Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes and the most influential of the Syriac versions of the Alexander legends. • Another prose version though shorter than the
Legend. In 1969, a translation of the Armenian recension was published by Albert Mugrdich Wolohojian. • A second Armenian version of the
Alexander Romance produced between the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The earliest manuscript is called San Lazzaro MS 424 (see ).
Coptic A
Coptic translation of the
Romance from the Greek was already being revised in the sixth century. A fragmentary manuscript, originally 220 pages long, in the
Sahidic dialect was discovered in the
White Monastery. It draws on older
Demotic Egyptian traditions, which existed in written form perhaps as early as 275 BC. It has been edited and published by Oscar von Lemm. Several fragments of it have been collected and translated.
Georgian Though Georgian versions of the
Alexander Romance have not survived, that they existed is known; it is thought that two versions existed. The earlier came into existence between the fourth and seventh centuries and its influence is detectable in extant Georgian texts such as
The Conversion of Kartli chronicles and in
The Life of Kings. The second was produced sometime between the ninth to twelfth centuries, and fragments of it were kept by the chronicler of
David the Builder and by a
Mongolian-era Georgian chronicler. Legends of Alexander would continue to influence varieties of Georgian literature from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Later, in the eighteenth century, the 18th-century king
Archil of Imereti would produce a translation of a Serbian or Russian
Alexander Romance into Georgian, and this one has survived.
Malay • The
Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain is a
Malay epic describing fictional exploits of
Alexander the Great (Iskandar), identified with
Dhu al-Qarnayn. Its ultimate source is most likely the Arabic
Sirat al-Iskandar. • The
Hikayat Raja Iskandar ("Story of King Alexander"). • The
Hikayat Ya’juj wa-Ma’juj ("Story of Gog and Magog"). • A 19th-century Javanese poem.
Mongolian • The Mongolian
Alexander Romance was composed in the 13th or 14th century in the
Uyghur alphabet. though the existence of this text has been disputed. •
Alexander the Great's representation in the Shahnameh, an epic of Persian kings composed by
Ferdowsi. It involves a lengthy story about Alexander which acts as the bridge-point between the mythological to historical realms of Ferdowsi's larger narrative. • The
Iskandarnameh (
Book of Alexander), an anonymous text dated to between the 11th and 14th centuries. • The
Iskandarnameh of
Nizami Ganjavi, composed before 1194. • The
Dârâb-nâme of Mohammad b. Hasan b. Ali b. Musâ Abu-Tâher Tarsusi (or Tartusi), written by the 12th century. • The
Ayina-i Iskandari (
Alexandrine Mirror) of
Amir Khusrow, completed in 1299/1300 during the reign of
Muhammad II of Khwarazm. • The
Kherad-nâme (
Book of Alexandrian Intelligence) of
Jâmi composed in the 15th century. • The
Ayina-i Iskandari of
Ahli Shirazi, completed in 1543. • The
Qissa-ye Dhuʾl Qarnayn (
Story of the Two-Horned One) of
Badri Kashmiri, composed in 1580. • The
Iskandarnameh of Sanai Mashhadi (d. 1588). • The
İskendernâme composed by Ahmedi's brother, Hamzavī. • The
Qiṣaṣ-i Rabghūzī (
Eastern Turkish Stories of the Prophets) is a 16th-century manuscript containing six stories about Alexander. ==See also==